The annual EERA Summer Schools bring together about 70 emerging researchers from 20 – 30 countries, who are tutored and advised by experienced researchers. Some EERA networks conduct subject-specific season schools.

Session Information

20 SES 08, Young People with Special Needs and Transitions and Subject Teachers' Response to Diverse Students and Index for Inclusion

Paper Session

Time:

2015-09-10

09:00-10:30

Room:

665.Oktatóterem [C]

Chair:

Gyöngyvér Pataki

Contribution

Drawing upon some of our data and discussions in a number of European projects on inclusion and intercultural education and on empirical studies on the development of innovative collaboration working towards inclusion in recent years this paper will discuss some of the conditions especially for the development of more reflective tools to enhance the development in practise and for the practitioners. The responsibility for learning and well-being in school is first relying on the professions especially when pupils are in transition between learning environments and in danger of exclusion. Hence, inclusion, as education can be seen as “… contributing to and organising the transition of children, young people and adults from one psychosocial status to another”.

No doubt many researcher are met with the demand for tools, especially hands-on tools or devices to show how to organise inclusive, intercultural schools, classrooms and communities. I our Danish National Centre for Inclusive (NVIE) for as well as in other centres, such as Centre for Inclusion and Exclusion in Manchester such reflective tool development has been organized since the first guidelines and handbooks set up already by UNESCO following the Salamanca Declaration. This paper discusses some of the important experiences and findings that can be summarized in general from tools serving as reflective media for the development of practise. We will have a special focus upon our own developed tools in DNCIP/NVIE, some of which have already been presented to and discussed within Network 20 and upon one of the most comprehensive tools, the Index of Inclusion, by Mel Ainscow and Tony Booth.

The study includes empirical studies using the tools from many perspectives from surveys as well as a narrative approaches. Attention is given to the aspects of the relation between professional innovative development of competences and professional change collaborating towards inclusion in its wider sense encompassing the school, preschool, families and local communities. The perspectives will be discussed further at the presentation using the concept of ‘ tools for innovative professional collaboration on pupil participation in communities of practise’ (Wenger) as a way of interpreting and evaluating the practise development of the teachers’ and other professionals’ and its effects on the pupils’ and other actors’ participation in social and cultural communities and as a possible framework for understanding how future reflective tools for teachers, preschool teachers, parents and governors may be developed in and around the pre-school, school, and after school activities with perspectives to the European context.

Method

The study includes data and discussions in a number of European projects on inclusion and intercultural education in recent years. The paper will discuss the effects of innovative inclusive and intercultural learning environments and teacher co-operation on the development of pedagogical practise, especially in preschools, schools and after school activities, where teachers are developing an inclusive practise. The paper will explore the relations between general pedagogical insights, innovative developments, intercultural education, values and respect, local cooperation, professional identity and the social and cultural context of the teachers when working towards inclusion. The aim of this paper is to include an empirical study especially focused upon preschool teachers’, the teachers’ and the after school teachers’ development of an innovative inclusive practise. The perspective is that of the teachers, the pupils, the parents, the school management and the municipal professional support, focusing on the development of an innovative co-operative practise. Special attention is given to the aspects of professional knowledge, competences and professional change working towards inclusion including perspectives at a European level, which will be discussed further at the presentation.

Expected Outcomes

Expected outcomes are conclusions as for the development of tools for the evaluation of indicators of pupil participation as effects of the development of an innovative inclusive and intercultural practise at several levels, working towards inclusion - with insights and perspectives at a European level. It is expected to result in a number of guiding material to inspire the preschool, school and after schoolteachers in their work developing their professional practise towards an enhanced intercultural and inclusive education.